HILARION, Saint. - Founder of eremitic life in Palestine, b. at Thabitha near Gaza in 291, d. in Cyprus in 371.
Sent by his parents to Alexandria to study, he heard talk of the hermit Antony and of his ascetic life; he therefore went to visit him and remained with him for 2 months, becoming enamored of that life. He then returned to his homeland, and, finding his parents dead, distributed all his goods to the poor, and, scarcely fifteen years old, withdrew to a solitary place 7 miles from Maiuma. For 5 years he lived in a hut, then he built himself a narrow little cell; sparing in food and austere in dress, he spent his time in penance and prayer. As the fame of his virtues and of the miracles he worked spread around, many joined him in that manner of life. In 329 he built the first monastery, thus giving origin to cenobitic life in Palestine, which very soon saw its monasteries multiply. Wearied, however, by continual visits, H. abandoned the monastery in search of a quieter place; he then went to the Thebaid, where he visited the places sanctified by Antony; he subsequently went to Alexandria, to Sicily, to Dalmatia and finally to Cyprus, where, already eighty years old, he died. His body was later stolen by his disciple Hesychius and buried at Maiuma.
The biography of H. was written, shortly after his death, by St. Jerome, around 391; all the later ones depend on it, not excluding the versions, the oldest of which, in Greek, dates to the first half of the 5th century and is owed to a certain Sophronius, a friend of St. Jerome himself. The anecdotal character of the Hieronymian biography, stuffed with more or less legendary and rhetorical details, drove some critics to deny it any historical foundation, maintaining that it was a completely invented novel, the protagonist included. Certainly St. Jerome wished to present a model of monastic virtues for the edification of pious souls, and to this end he wrote the biography of H.; but this does not authorize denying the historical existence of the subject. Indeed, the life, the disciples and the veneration that H. enjoyed at Maiuma are attested also, and independently of St. Jerome, by the historian Sozomen. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on 21 October.